There will be chaos in the courts, which will be unable to deal with an avalanche of possession claims once the ban on bailiff evictions is lifted.

This is the prediction of Landlord Action founder Paul Shamplina, who says there are a backlog of 20,000 evictions cases or more.

In a normal year there are 28,000 evictions processed by the courts. Last year, only 500 were processed following the Coronavirus lockdown.

In additions to usual crop of new cases, the courts are now faced with the task of working through the mounting backlog, Shamplina pointed out.

‘These unprocessed evictions will not go away’, he said. ‘Unfortunately, we now have a situation where cases are backed up, new cases are arising all the time and the scale of the issue is impossible to predict, because so many are still being cushioned by support such as furlough, business grants and/or mortgage holidays.

‘When this package of measures comes to an end, and without government support to help tenants pay back accumulated arrears, I fear we could be heading for an eviction avalanche’.